


sound and stillness

by lizzieraindrops



Category: The Far Meridian (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, First Kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 03:12:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15306171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzieraindrops/pseuds/lizzieraindrops
Summary: I summarized this fic to my sister as "what might have happened after the perfect firefly evening if either of those girls had half the communication skills God gave Esther Roberts"Or, a first kiss fic.Note: While there is a lot of sensual imagery here, I am super ace and I always end up writing my faves super ace. So if you, like me, always find yourself walking into shippy fic bracing yourself for the inevitable sexytimes, fear not! It ain't happening.





	sound and stillness

Ruth could stay in this perfect moment forever. She wraps her arms around herself in her cabled sweater, curling in against the faint chill of the cooling evening air whispering its way through the woods. She's surrounded by the gleam of the camp light and a flow of glimmering fireflies winking in and out. The air is humming with a melody that thrums right through her chest as if it were her own voice singing. 

But it isn't. It's Peri. Empty-handed, she can only carry half a tune, but when she picks up her violin it becomes her voice, and suddenly she can sing like a siren and all Ruth wants to do is look and listen. With the instrument under her chin, her shoulders lift and her posture blooms out of its usual hesitant slouch into the expert poise of a dancer. 

Ruth's heard her practicing this exact song dozens of times, but until now it's never struck her quite like this, like she needs to sit as still as possible, so that she doesn't interrupt it with her own mundane rustlings. Her muscles go soft and still as she listens with her whole body, trying to catch every note and nuance of bow over string and wood full of song, vibrating across her skin, a physical ambience made of sound.

When the song stops, everything goes quiet except for the crickets, even the wind, but Ruth is held in stillness by the way it's still echoing along her bones. She's a musician herself, she's sang her heart out or lost herself in a song a hundred times. She thought she knew what it was to love music. But this is the first time it's felt like the music loved her back, and she'd never known it could.

She's still frozen in place as the violin drops away to hang vertically from where Peri clasps it at the neck, the bow hanging from her bent wrist like a folded feather instead of the extended wing of a moment ago. Her shoulders twitch like they want to twist back into the unconscious, defensive inward curl they so often adopt. But she, too, is frozen now, watching with eyes wide, heart exposed, waiting.

Ruth lifts her hands, but suddenly it seems wrong to shatter the stillness with the coarse sound of clapping. So she holds her palms out to either side of her head and twists them back and forth in enthusiastic silent applause, like she learned in sign language class. Then they're both smiling, and both the stillness and the silence release them.

"Peri, that was _incredible_. You're amazing," Ruth gushes. She stands up in front of the camplight without uncrossing her legs and walks over to Peri, who is now ducking her head in embarrassed pleasure. "I've never heard you _play_ like that, where did that come from?" 

"I _practiced_ ," she says wryly.

"Ha, ha. Here, let me hug you, you dork, that was fantastic."

"Watch the violin, please!" Peri protests, holding the instrument out at arm's length and hugging Ruth with the other. The bow, still in her hand, bounces against Ruth's back as she pulls Peri close and folds her into an embrace, padded by the thick sleeves of her sweater. She leans her head against Peri's. Inhales, exhales. Then she lets go long before she'd rather, because she doesn't want to make Peri keep holding the violin out. Their cheeks brush as she pulls away, and as she meets Peri's eyes, the stillness descends on them again for just an instant. The air between them is silently ringing like a concert hall after the last note of a symphony, but before the thunderous applause. Then a firefly flashes between them, breaking their locked gaze, and Peri's ducking her head again, saying, "Here, let me put this away, I always worry about having it out here, you know, and if you're gonna be prone to spontaneous aggressive displays of affection, I don't wanna drop it on a rock or something..."

"Oh, hush, that's not an _aggressive_ display of affection," Ruth says, stepping back while reaching out to tousle Peri's hair with a grin. This elicits a grumble of mock annoyance as she steps out from under Ruth's hand to put her violin away, to which she answers, "You know you love it, admit it."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Peri says dismissively, but she's smiling into her violin case as she loosens the cream-colored horsehair of the bow and tucks it into its resting place in the lid. She shuts the case and closes its clasps with two dull clicks, and then the only sounds that remain are the trilling of the crickets and the gentle sigh of the breeze. 

Ruth sits back down on the picnic blanket next to the camp light and lays back, hands folded behind her head. She hears footsteps soft on forest floor and then muffled on the thickness of the blanket as Peri comes to sit next to her. Ruth turns her head to see her sitting there crosslegged, staring up into the shadowy canopy above, watching the fireflies. The tiny golden lights drift soundlessly along a thousand trajectories, blinking in and out of existence above their heads like some pattern that would reveal itself, if only she could see the whole picture in all its intricacy.

Ruth tries to say "Thanks," but some tension somewhere within her makes the word come out of her throat thin as a whisper.

There's a faint rustle of Peri's sweatshirt as she turns to look at Ruth. "You're so welcome," she whispers back. She leans toward the camp light to turn it down to its lowest setting, so that the golden glow of the fireflies shines even brighter in the night.

Ruth's lungs are full of words that won't form and notes caught in her chest unsung. But it's okay to let herself be silent for now, while they try to find their way out from deep within her. The two of them stay like that for a timeless while, watching the fireflies arc over and around them, weaving the evening into a tapestry threaded with light.

 

***

 

Eventually, the night grows cool enough for Peri to start worrying about her violin being out in the cold. So they get ready to go back to the lighthouse, even though Peri doesn't really think either of them want to leave. She carefully slings her violin case over one shoulder, while Ruth gathers up the blanket, grabs the wire handle of the camp light, and starts walking the winding path back through the trees toward the shore. Peri speeds up to a trot for a few steps so she can catch up to her. They walk close side by side all the way, not touching except by accident, whenever one of them stumbles over the shadows cast by the camp light over the rough ground. 

The lighthouse is dark and quiet when they get back, only lit by the few lamps that have been left on for them. They duck in through its heavy door to escape the chill night wind that's blowing something in off the sea. It's not a school night, and they've been out late. Everyone else has gone to bed, her parents in their attached room on the ground floor, and Ace in his room up just below the light. Peri creeps up the stairs as quietly as she can toward her room below her brother's. She's followed by Ruth as soon as she finishes stowing the camp light and blanket back in the closet. They slip into Peri's room, dimly lit by the warm glow of the desk lamp she left on. She leans her violin case against the wall in its usual place next to the dresser strewn with books, comics, and the occasional potted plant.

Peri plops down to sit on the side of her bed and take off her sneakers. "Back again," she says, keeping her voice low.

Now that they're inside, Ruth shucks off her heavy sweater and throws it onto the foot of Peri's bed, where it lands crumpled with one sleeve spilling over the edge. She sits down beside her in her tank top and jeans, one leg dangling off the side of the bed and one folded up onto it. "Back again," she echoes, just as softly. Her voice has always been like velvet. The first time Peri heard it, she wanted to run her hands through it. But she's never known how to touch a voice, so she contents herself with listening to it. She's reminded that Ruth is a singer every time she opens her mouth.

"Golly, I didn't realize it was this late," Peri says, eyeing her green-glowing alarm clock. It's just past eleven. Time hadn't felt of any consequence, when they were insulated from the rest of the world by trees and flickers of gold. "Sorry to keep you so long," she says, ignoring the way her heart sinks at the prospect of saying goodnight. It's only for the day, or the weekend, at most. If nothing else, she'll see her at school soon enough. Of course, that's assuming that she makes it to school on Monday. The bad days, the ones where she has to stay home because she can't breathe when she's more than a few yards from the lighthouse, have been getting more frequent. The scariest part is how she never knows when it's going to happen next, only that it inevitably will, and that it will hurt.

But she tries not to think about _that_ , not now, not when everything else this evening has been so unbelievably perfect. She'll see Ruth again soon, and any time she gets to see her is a good one.

"Hey," Ruth says, nudging her in the side with an elbow and tugging her wandering mind back to the present. "Don't worry about it. I wouldn't have missed it for anything. I can't believe it, all that self-deprecating moaning and groaning about how awful you sound, and then you come out with _that_! That was just..." she trails off, looking out the window toward the night sea. Her voice goes even softer as she says, "That was incredible. _You're_ incredible."

Peri hopes she can't see how much she's blushing in the dim lamplight. She tries not to smile as widely as her cheeks want to. It seems inappropriate somehow. "Thanks. You don't know how long I've been wanting to do something like that -" she stops herself before she ends the sentence with _for you_. It doesn't sound like something she should say.

Ruth doesn't reply, and Peri turns to see those dark, dark eyes, watching her from the shadows. She quickly looks away, because if she doesn't, she'll just blush harder. She hears Ruth inhale deeply, like she always does before she sings.

"Peri?"

Peri keeps her eyes on the alarm clock. "Yeah?" It flicks to 11:11. _Make a wish on the double!_ her mother always says when that happens. Peri doesn't. She doesn't even know what exactly she would wish for. But she's pretty sure that trying to describe it would be too much to bear. She knows it will tell her things about herself that she may not be ready to know with her waking mind. Besides, assigning numbers to time is arbitrary, and clocks are just a symbolic stand-in for a cultural concept. She doesn't know how any particular configuration of pixels on a digital screen would have any wish-granting power.

Her mind snaps back to the present yet again, and the realization that Ruth hasn't answered for however long she's been gone.

"What is it?" 

"Do you..." Ruth begins, uncharacteristically hesitant, "...ever wonder..."

Peri has no idea what she means, but she can't help but laugh. "With _my_ anxiety? Probably, whatever it is."

She doesn't have to look at Ruth to know how the wide sweep of her eyeroll encompasses all of immediate existence. " _Dork_ ," Ruth says, retaliating with a gentle shove. Peri sways away from her with the momentum of it, then swings back to bang her shoulder into Ruth's, a little harder than she'd intended. She carefully suppresses a cringe at her own awkwardness and folds her hands in her lap, tucking her arms tightly in to her sides. Ruth, though, just chuckles.

"I was _saying_ ," Ruth continues. Something about her voice makes Peri's ears prick up. It's still soft as ever, but the texture of it is different. Like how it would feel to run her hand against the grain of velvet instead of with it.

"Do you ever wonder if..." Ruth trails off again. "Arghh," she growls, and promptly plants both her feet on the rug on the floor and leans right over to put her head on her knees.

"Hey!" Peri says, laying a hand on her shoulder in concern. There's tension cording the muscles there. "Are you okay? What's wrong?"

"Nothing!" Ruth's voice is muffled against her knees. "That's exactly it!"

"What? What are you talking about?"

Ruth sits back up, hands on her thighs, and looks at her like she's forcing herself to. Peri doesn't look away this time, too confused and worried about her best friend to fret about what her own face is doing.

Ruth takes another singer's breath. Her expressive face is strangely blank, like she's deliberately guarding it. "Do you ever wonder if we - could be..." A breath. "Something."

Peri blinks. The first conclusion that her foolish brain jumps to can't possibly be what Ruth means, but she can't figure out what she _does_. "Something like... what?"

Ruth looks down into her lap for a moment, then sighs and visibly lets the tension slough off of her. There's something fragile that wants to be a smile on her face, and her eyes when they meet Peri's are as soft as her voice. Suddenly, that charged stillness from the woods is back again, permeating the air with the intensity of petrichor. Slowly, as if reaching out to touch a wild bird, Ruth lifts both hands to hold Peri's face between her palms, tangling the tips of her fingers in the roots of her hair. She's so, so close, but not moving any closer. She's waiting. 

"Something like this," she whispers, and Peri can feel the breath of every word. Her poor heart is pounding, and she doesn't even want to think about what her face is showing. Even though Peri hasn't moved, she's lost her balance, and she seizes on to one of Ruth's wrists to keep herself from falling. But at her touch, those familiar hands jerk away from their unfamiliar place, leaving her cheeks cold. Peri only just manages to hold on to the one in her grasp.

"Oh God, what am I doing - Peri, I'm so sorry -" Ruth's eyes are so wide. The warm wrist in her hand tries to twist away, but Peri holds on tight. She braces her other hand on the bedspread, still trying to regain her balance.

"Wha- wait, no, I - _wait_." Absolute stillness. Everything that isn't part of this incredible stillness between them seems so far away. Even the ever-present rush of the surf outside has receded to something unnoticed. There's nothing beyond this circular room and its stone walls, no rooms beyond the stairway that pierces the ceiling and floor. There is only the overwhelming presence of something long dormant but now disturbed into fretful, undeniable wakefulness.

Words surge in Peri's head like froth on a windy sea, but she can only skim off the smallest of them. "It's... I..." she starts. She waits for a few waves to break, and starts sorting through the shreds of truth they leave on the shore. "I didn't mean for you to... I just felt like I was going to fall over. I needed to hold on to something. And I... well..." Peri bites her lip, because she hasn't even really admitted it to herself. "...Yes. I have."

"Have what?" Ruth says, completely nonplussed.

"Wondered."

"... Oh."

"I thought... I thought it was just my brain throwing up stupid, impossible ideas, like it always does."

Ruth isn't pulling away anymore, but neither is she as close as she was before. Peri both wants her much further and much, much closer, and she's tethered in place by the opposite impulses. There's nothing to do but keep speaking.

"I didn't think about it, because I thought it wasn't real. But now..." Peri squeezes her eyes shut so she doesn't have to look at Ruth's waiting, listening face while she says something so ridiculous. "I think that's why... that's why I wanted to play that song, like that. For you."

There's a beat of silence. "I... I know," Ruth says, sounding surprised at herself. Peri opens her eyes again. Ruth is watching Peri's hand on her wrist, holding.

"What do you mean, you _know_?" Peri says, nearly indignant.

"I don't know! I just - I _felt_ it, hours ago, I felt that when you played, and this whole time since then I've been trying to put it into _words_ that I can _say_ with my _mouth_ , but all I've managed is this mess." Her shoulders sag. "I'm sorry."

"Hey." Peri lets go of her wrist, and instead gently clasps her hand. "Don't be." Hardly believing that she dares, she lifts her other hand to run her fingers along Ruth's jawline, trying not to let her arm shake, then lets them fall to rest against her neck.

"...Peri?" Ruth says softly.

Oh. She can feel Ruth's voice humming just under her fingertips. This is what touching velvet feels like. She can't help it: she starts trembling at the enormity of what's happening.

Of course, Ruth feels it. "Oh, Peri, honey, you're shaking." She gathers Peri's hands between her own and holds them close, kissing her knuckles. "I'm sorry," she says again. Then she draws Peri into her familiar embrace, resting her chin on her shoulder. It's a comfort they both need, the return to this well-known territory, when the ground has shifted so strangely beneath them.

"Don't be," Peri says again, closing her eyes and just leaning into her, waiting for her shakes to subside. Ruth rubs a gentle thumb in circles over her shoulder blades. Her hair falls soft against the side of Peri's face. The smell of the trees and the sea still cling to it.

"Are you okay?" Ruth says softly in her ear.

"I..." Peri begins. "I have no idea. But I'm glad you're here. And, it's okay, you know," she says, letting go so she can look Ruth in the face again, "I..."

Whatever else she was going to say is lost when their eyes lock, just like they did among the fireflies. But this time, there are no more flying stars to break their gaze with gold. They're abruptly toeing the edge of unfamiliar ground again, and Peri is seized by the desire to make a mad dash right into the heart of that strange new country.

She's close again, now. Very close. "Can I...?" Ruth says, and the wind of her words hangs between them, delicate like a spiderweb. 

Almost imperceptibly, Peri nods twice.

Ruth's lips are slightly dry from being out in the cold, but that doesn't matter, because now she's here, in this room, drawing Peri into a kiss as deep as a well. And Peri is kissing her back like she never knew she could, like a desert wanderer who's finally found water, and she's drinking every detail of her in. The brush of her breath, the warmth of her skin, the exquisite velvet hum of pleasure in her throat. This time, it's Peri's hands that find themselves tangled through hair, and the hands gliding over her back are sketching out wings she could fly with. When she feels gentle fingers slide up to caress the back of her neck, sending spangles all down her body, she has to break away to gasp for air, shivering.

Ruth stops, but lets the warm weight of her hands come to rest on Peri's shoulders. "...Should we stop?"

Peri shakes her head and dives back in, fully wrapping her arms around the back of Ruth's neck. She feels Ruth smiling against her, and marvels at the way she's meeting that familiar smile anew with her lips instead of her eyes. One of Ruth's hands is pressed flush against her spine, and the other slides back up her neck to weave through her hair against her tingling scalp and pull her closer, closer. Peri is beginning to shake again, and although the feeling is not unlike her more customary terror, it doesn't feel _wrong_. She's only realizing just now that she's wanted this for a long, long time, been longing for it so deeply that she couldn't even feel it in the depths of herself. She could completely immerse herself in this overwhelming ocean of new sensations and revelations and never come up for air.

Her lungs, though, have other ideas. Their lips break apart again and Peri sags forward, leaning her forehead against Ruth's. They're both breathing hard, but Peri's nearly hyperventilating. 

"Hey, you sure you're good?" Ruth asks quietly.

"Um..." Peri says. She looks into Ruth's dark eyes again, as if they will anchor her, but they're only inches from her own. Seeing them so close and being seen by them just makes her face flush harder and her heart beat faster. She very nearly kisses Ruth again, yearning forward within a hair's breadth of her lips. But she really is shaking quite hard now, and she needs a moment to breathe. "Yeah. But, uh, maybe we should. Stop for a minute."

"Okay." Ruth lifts her head to plant a kiss between Peri's eyes, then leans her forehead against hers again. They stay like that for awhile, catching their breath. Peri's still quivering, and Ruth isn't exactly steady as a stone herself. Peri can hear a ragged edge to the sound of her breathing. But it gradually smooths into a regular ebb and surge like the tide, and Peri's lungs soon find themselves willing to fall into the pattern. The sounds of the rising wind wrapping itself around this stone pillar full of stillness return to her ears, followed by the hiss of the surf beyond the cliffs.

Then her attention is brought back to the girl in front of her, the girl her arms are still around, this girl that she's known for years, because that girl is _giggling_ like they're ten years old again and splashing each other in the shallows of the sea.

" _What?_ " Peri demands, though the corners of her mouth are already curling with the contagious mirth.

"I just - I can't believe we're only just now doing this," Ruth says.

Peri can't help it. She starts giggling, too, and that only makes Ruth laugh harder.

"Shh!" Peri hisses, but she's grinning. "You'll wake everyone up!"

"Sorry," Ruth says, not sounding it in the slightest. But she quiets, and leans forward to hug Peri again, tightly. They've hugged so many times, but they've never held each other quite like this, completely wrapped around each other and clinging close, where Peri can feel her own heart beating against someone else's chest. And she can feel Ruth's heartbeat, too. Their pulses are like two birds, calling and peering at each other through the bars of their rib cages.

"I didn't know," Peri whispers close to Ruth's ear. "I didn't know we could, I didn't know you felt like this, I didn't know _I_ felt like this. I didn't know."

"It's okay," Ruth murmurs back. "It's okay. We're here now. I'm right here."

For a moment, Peri holds her just a little tighter. Then she lets her arms slip from around her, trailing across her back and sliding down her bare arms. Peri follows the momentum and falls back flat against her bedspread, heaving an enormous sigh of contentment. She stretches out her legs and lets gravity flatten her out.

Very carefully, Ruth lays down parallel to her, not touching her. But when Peri holds out her hand between them, she takes it.

"It's late," Peri whispers. "Why don't you stay."

"Okay." Ruth runs her thumb over Peri's fingers. Then she wriggles a bit and uses her other hand to pull her phone out of the back pocket of her jeans, where she's laying on it. Peri watches her type out: _got back late, staying at peri's. see you tmrw._ She taps the screen and sends the message, probably to her dad, who's usually still up at this hour. Then she tosses her phone down onto the foot of the bed by her sweater. She looks at Peri, half her hair falling in her eyes and the rest splayed gracefully across the blue and green seashell pattern of Peri's comforter. She smiles, and Peri's breath catches.

"I know we usually camp out up top by the light or down in the living room," Peri says in a soft voice, "but you can sleep here with me, if you want."

There's a beat of silence before Peri realizes what she just said. "Oh God, no, I didn't mean -" She flushes red-hot and rolls away from Ruth and onto her side to clap her hands over her face, groaning with embarrassment.

Ruth, though, just giggles again. Peri feels fingertips tickling her back and rolls back over to shove Ruth in half-mock indignation. Ruth gives a tiny yelp of alarm and nearly falls off the side of the bed.

"Hey!" Ruth says plaintively. She resettles herself lying on her side, propping herself up on her elbow. "I know that wasn't what you meant. And honestly, the thought wasn't even on my mind. I'm happy like this." She reaches out to pull one of Peri's hands to her and kiss the knuckles of it once again. Peri thinks it might be the sweetest gesture in the world.

She smiles at Ruth from behind the one arm she still has curled close in front of her face and chest. "Me, too." Then, "Stay?"

"Of course. 

Peri can't help it: her smile is taking over her face. She squeezes Ruth's fingers, then sits up to maneuver her way under the thick comforter. "Do you want a t-shirt or something to sleep in?" Peri asks. 

"Nah, I'm comfy like this. Are you gonna change?"

Peri shrugs and shakes her head. She rarely wears anything too uncomfortable, so her clothes are good enough, and they're what she's spent this whole evening in, so they're perfect. She wants to stay in this moment for as long as she can.

Ruth's halfway under the covers when she says, "Oh, shoot, the lamp," and hops back out of bed to walk across the room to the desk and turn it off. Darkness blacks everything out. "Shit," Ruth mutters. "I'm gonna run into the bed. Or, my luck, the wall."

"Just come this way," Peri says into the darkness from where she's laying on her side. She hears Ruth walk from the stone of the floor to the shag of the rug. "It's right here. I'm right here." The mattress shifts as she bumps a cautious knee into it. Peri lifts the covers for her and whispers, "Come here." Ruth crawls under the blankets and under her arm to curl up against her, so that her back is pressed against Peri's chest and their feet are tangling together. They're soon breathing together again in the stillness, and Peri's never felt so soft and safe and happy in her whole life. She's always known that Ruth means the world to her, but she'd never realized that _this_ was what that could mean.

She unwraps her arm from Ruth for a moment to stroke her hair and gently tuck it behind her ear, so that she can lean over and lay a kiss on her cheek. Ruth makes that vibrant hum in her throat again, and somehow in it Peri can hear her smiling. Ruth turns her head so that she can brush her lips against Peri's one more time, and it's soft, and simple, and so, so real. "Goodnight, Peri," she whispers in that velvet voice. Peri lays her head down and wraps her arm around Ruth once more. Ruth takes her hand and laces their fingers together in front of her chest. Then they just breathe, and then they just sleep.

 

***

 

In the morning, Peri is wakened early by the mellow grumble of distant thunder and the rush and patter of soft rain against the windows and walls. She's laying on her back, staring up at the smooth stones of the ceiling. Ruth is curled into her, her sleeping head resting on her shoulder, and she's clinging to Peri's arm, pressing it against her chest. Her hair is falling over her eyes again, like always, and she's beautiful, like always. Peri had never realized that she thought that, but she does, she did, and she probably always will.

A sound breaks the stillness: footsteps on the stairs. Peri's stomach flips over. Ace. He's always an early riser. The lighthouse stair winds through every room. Just the same way she and Ruth have to go through his room whenever they want to get up to the light, he has to go through Peri's room to get to the rest of the house. Without thinking, Peri starts to move, because she doesn't know how to deal with whatever her brother will make of this, but her shifting draws a sleepy sound from Ruth, and she has to stop. She wouldn't wake her now for the world. Besides, Ace's feet are already in view on the stairs, and there's no point.

Normally, he completely ignores Peri as he passes through. That's their agreement: the stairs are just a hallway, and their rooms don't exist for each other unless they're invited in. But the unfamiliar sound of Ruth's sleepy groan draws his attention, and he pauses on the steps with his brow furrowed. When he sees the two of them, his eyebrows go up in surprise, and then his face breaks into an infuriatingly delighted grin as he meets Peri's eyes in the predawn light. He extends both his arms to give Peri a big double thumbs-up. Peri flushes again, too aware of her own heartbeat, and raises her free arm to unambiguously flip him the bird. But her movement disturbs Ruth again, and while she doesn't wake, she does grumble in her sleep again and shift to throw her arm across Peri and pull her closer. Peri sighs and covers her eyes, face burning.

She hears Ace snicker as he continues down the stairs and leaves the two of them alone. Though Peri's still cringing a little inside, at least now she doesn't have to find a way to tell him. She lays there very still, letting her heart and her breath slow into softness again. It's almost what she'd call easy, with Ruth right there next to her, just breathing and holding her. It normally takes her at least half an hour to wind down after she gets keyed up, with the way that her brain takes any small fright and tells the rest of her body to respond to it as if to a life-or-death catastrophe. But right now, her limbs are rich with the memory of holding and being held all night, and there's little room left in them for fear.

She sighs and sinks back into contentment, managing to forget about Ace for now. Slowly, the morning light turns gold as the sun comes up from the sea, sliding softened through window and rainwater to paint itself dappled across the walls.

Finally, Ruth stirs awake, and her dark eyes open, only looking richer and darker for the brightness in the room. Peri watches her wake from only inches away, and gets to see the way the sleepy blankness of her face shifts to blooming recognition to pure joy when she finds Peri so close to her, visibly remembering what has changed between them.

"Hi," Peri says softly. They're already so close, but she rolls onto her side and leans forward to touch their foreheads together in greeting.

In the stillness wrapped in rain, they breathe. "Hey," says her best friend, her dearest, her Ruth, and they're awake.


End file.
